


hendersonville

by spookykingdomstarlight



Category: Original Work
Genre: Community: spook_me, Gen, Lynchian Imagery, Men in Black - Freeform, Mythical Beings & Creatures, POV Second Person, Spook Me Multi-Fandom Halloween Ficathon, Suburban Gothic, UFOs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-26
Updated: 2017-10-26
Packaged: 2019-01-23 09:21:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12504152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spookykingdomstarlight/pseuds/spookykingdomstarlight
Summary: His lips pull back from his gums, forming a rictus grin that he turns on you. His blue-black hair, heavy with pomade, catches the light as he tilts his head in awkward acknowledgment. “Good morning,” he says, slow, his voice as flat as any newscaster’s. Flatter even. You can’t place him as being from anywhere at all.It’s three in the afternoon.





	hendersonville

The vinyl seat squeaks beneath you as you shift away from the waitress dressed in eggshell blue, a crisp, white apron wrapped tight around her waist. She leans in, a plastic smile on her mouth, and pops her gum violently between her molars. By the time she’s done with you, the porcelain mug sat near your elbow is full to brimming with coffee, almost threatening to spill over onto the mother-of-pearl-sheened tabletop. Steam curls toward the ceiling and dissipates into the ether. Sometimes, you wish you could do the same. She’s also pushed an order of chicken fried steak on you and some cobbler, peach-apricot. _Pie’s not ready yet,_ she says, apologetic. _Stick around, you can have a slice_.

You nod and will her to go away.

Once she does, you stare at the formica, smooth under your touch and dancing rainbows against the sunlight streaming in through the large window to your right. It’s warm against your skin, not quite burning hot, but unpleasant all the same. Sweat gathers under the armpits of your acidic green blouse, trickles down the neckline. It might be short-sleeved, but you’re sweltering all the same. It might be made of wonder fabrics, but polyester doesn’t breathe. Never has. You’d tear off the bow tied around your throat if you could, but propriety demands you let it alone even though it’s strangling you.

On a telephone pole outside, there’s the photo of a grinning man and a number to call. The breeze picks it up and stirs its edges, obscuring and revealing it in turns. Two mere staples keep it attached and you wish the wind would finally rip it free. You consider running out there and tearing it from the half-smooth, half-rough wood holding it in place yourself, but you do not.

“You see those lights out over Hendersonville?” the waitress says. The clarity of her voice startles you. It’s not until you look up that you realize she’s talking to a stooped young man sitting at the counter. Dishwater blond hair falls free of the band trying to hold it back, making it impossible for you to distinguish much more than the tip of his nose. His hands grip the far edge of it, like he intends to pull himself up and over. “Wyvin’s saying they scorched the Paulson farm’s prize apple orchard.”

“Bullshit,” the guy answers. He pauses to clear his throat and cough, thick and heavy, before swallowing back whatever he’s hacked up. “They been trying to earn a profit on those ‘prize’ apples for twenty years. Paulson took a torch to it himself, I’ll tell you that for nothin’.”

The waitress put her hand on her waist and raised an eyebrow. “That’s generous of you, Terrence. And why would Paulson do that? He loves that damned orchard.”

Now the man leaned back, far enough that you worry he might fall right off the red cushion of his stool. He whistles, determined, you guess, to get the whole damned diner’s attention. It seems to be working. “Insurance payout, Diane.”

Before he can lay out his theory for all to hear, the bell above the door chimes out a greeting, a warning, an alarm. No one besides you notices that it rings _before_ the door opens. In fact, no one besides you seems to notice that anyone else has come in at all.

You could mistake him for one of Hoover’s G-Men if not for the exceptionally poor fit of his suit, the brown of his shoes mismatched to the black of his belt. He removes his hat like any gentleman would, but holds it cupped between both hands at about chest level like he doesn’t know what to do with it now.

His lips pull back from his gums, forming a rictus grin that he turns on you. His blue-black hair, heavy with pomade, catches the light as he tilts his head in awkward acknowledgment. “Good morning,” he says, slow, his voice as flat as any newscaster’s. Flatter even. You can’t place him as being from anywhere at all.

It’s three in the afternoon.

“Miss,” he adds, after a delay and after he takes the booth behind yours and after he slips into the seat that faces you. That immovable smile remains in place. Though there is two tables’ worth of distance between you, you feel crowded. His presence, otherwise inane by all known metrics, fills the room, burns through the oxygen, leaves you pressing your hand against your chest. Your lungs tighten. He knows. He _knows_.

He smiles wider. Marble is more dynamic than the dimples and lines that form in his cheek.

His eyes, glassy, blink slowly. Chips of obsidian have more color and dimension in them and you’re left wondering just how he looks at himself in the mirror with unfathomable eyes like that.

Look away, look away, look away.

You can’t look away.

“Insurance,” the young man—Terrence, he has a name ,Diane just said it—continues, still stuck on his grand felonious conspiracy. His finger stabs at the counter, thumping in quick succession. Each repetition pounds against the inside of your skull. “That’s the ticket.”

“Paulson’s orchard isn’t insured,” your man says through lips that barely part. It is a challenge, but a cordial one. All of its edges are blunted by the mundanity of the assertion.

Terrence swivels, his face reddening. He’s even younger than you’d thought. Must think he has more to prove, too. “The hell it isn’t!”

“Tell me about the lights.”

The waitress winds around the counter, her faithful coffee pot in hand. She’s catching on, you think, senses your uneasiness. Maybe. Then again, it could be she’s just wary of the possibility that Terrence will cause some trouble here. That’s a distinct possibility even you can see.

“Over the Paulson farm.” Still friendly, the man remains unperturbed by Terrence and his outburst. He murmurs a thank you as Diane offers him coffee. She takes three steps back before mentioning that she’ll grab a menu for him, so sorry she didn’t bring one with her. “Did you see them?”

He doesn’t, you can’t help noting, actually drink the coffee. It remains at his elbow, cooling even as you watch. It’s a waste you don’t understand. Coffee’s a drink worth savoring, after all. It’s not a thing to ignore.

You take a long, deep swig of yours in protest.

“No.” Sullen, Terrence crosses his arms. His drab green jacket stretches tight across his biceps and shoulders. The hem of one wrist has frayed with age. “That would be Wyvin. I don’t _go_ to Hendersonville.”

“I’m just… making conversation,” the man answers. One of his hands lifts, palm out, stiff. An awkward, unreal mea culpa. You don’t believe for a second he means it or that he even really realizes why he’s explaining himself. Frankly, if he were anyone else, you’d take his side. Terrence has been a jerk from the moment you walked into this place. But the man puts you so on edge, you can’t really blame Terrence for snapping at him. You’d snap, too, if you were capable of forming the words.

But your tongue is dry. The coffee only helps so much. And you don’t want to draw anymore attention to yourself than those lights over Hendersonville did.

The man’s eyes snap back to your face. “Did you see them?”

Grit as thick as the sand of the Pacific coast threatens to choke you. The dust of a millennia spent in hiding lodges itself in your throat and threatens to condense itself into a hard, implacable stone. You are so very tired.

He knows. He wants to drag you back to the ocean, the desert, the stars, the sun, the moon.

He wants to take you to the one home you never want to return to.

“I saw nothing,” you say, voice beat about and scratched to hell and back. A frog’s croak sounds more elegant. It awakens something visceral and cold inside of you. Uncurling, it slithers through you, settles like netting over your bones.

His careful, perfect façade cracks just a little bit, just enough to see past the blankness into the unfathomable heart of him.

More will come. Lights and men and lights again.

You eat the chicken-fried steak Diane brings to you. You drink your ever-replenishing mug of coffee.

You climb to your feet and drop a handful of change plus a one dollar bill onto the table.

“I don’t live in Hendersonville.”

And it’s true.

You don’t. Not anymore.


End file.
